Text Based Task Management Systems
As of today, I am aware of 4 (four) text-based task management systems:
Since week 6 of 2024, I am back to using Org Mode, after using Workflowy for the last couple of years. The move to Org was not caused by any major deficiency in Workflowy. Nor thanks to some unique feature of Org Mode.
In a way, I believe the main reason was that I wanted ownership and control. And I was prepared to accept the learning curve and having to invest some work into making some not-quite-clear-solutions work.
Take for example accessing the org files on a phone which led me back to beorg iOS app for which I am now paying a subscription1. And to which I had to submit a couple of feature requests to make it really useful to me—I’m thankful the developer accepted most of them.
Or customizing the views of the tasks to fit my usage which led me to learning about org-ql, running into some bugs, waiting to get them fixed. Again, I’m thankful the developer listened and invested the effort to fix them.
I have not tried any of the other three systems. I do recall reading about todo.txt long ago and liking what I read. I do not remember why at that time I chose Org Mode over todo.txt, but I have the feeling the main reason had to do with the fascination I have for Emacs and Vim.
I don’t like subscriptions for tools I really depend on and that do not really have recurring costs generated by my continuous use or costs that grow together with their usage. But this is a topic that is too complicated for a footnote. ↩︎